The Valley Part 3 - 4E + Classes & Races

Ok, so far I’ve given the origins of the chaotic thought processes that coalesced into the Valley and then the impact that PC’s had on the world.

Now I’ve got to toss 4E D&D into the mix in addition to any other things I’d like to add or change.

First I need to decide what I’m including and not. The first step, and arguably the most important, what races and classes can the players take for their PC’s.

While I’m a fan of letting players make PC’s using all rules available, this is not going to be a totally open-ended campaign where the DM decides what’s going to happen Thursday night. This campaign has its limitations based on the story, and yes, the DM’s liking and disliking of certain pieces of 4E.

My original plan was to allow around 8 races and 8 classes. I’m glad to say I’ve gotten quite close to that.

My goals is to have no classes or races that go against the setup of the world I’ve made so far, or that have the potential to cause a large amount of time sink.

So let us go through the races in order as they appear in the PHB & PHB2 (nothing from FR).

(Note – some “Out” races and classes could appear in the DM’s hands. Unfair? Too bad. I’m not letting the PC’s play mind flayers either. Got a problem with that? Some classes and races are better suited for villains rather than PC’s.)

Dragonborn – Out
I promised awhile ago that they’d be out of my campaigns. While I’m not so much against them as I used to be, I don’t like their racial power as overly time-consuming, not very useful unless cleaning up minions, and usable way to often. Then, if I wanted to include them, I’d have to make some special rules like the world split into two 30,000 years ago and just recently remerged. How stupid of an idea is that?

Dwarf – In
This is a no-brainer since they’re part of the core story.
For this campaign they’ll come in 3 varieties: Ironmonger dwarves, Silverhome dwarves, and outsiders (meaning they’re normal dwarves from outside the Valley).

Eladrin – In
I’ve decided to split the original elves from the Valley into eladrin and elves while explaining it away as “humans can’t tell the difference”. There is very little difference between Valley and outsider Eladrins.

Elf – In
Ditto the eladrin info.

Half-elf – In
Yet another no-brainer, though there not any human/eladrin children…yet.
Note – the half-elf dilettante power must come from the approved classes.

Halfling – In
This race barely made it, only because not having them would feel “wrong”. All halflings are outsiders and to demonstrate the relative rarity of halflings, a player has a halfling PC only once. Death or bored of playing a halfling PC means no more halflings for that player.

Human – In
Maybe one day I’ll run a campaign where there are no humans. But not this time around. Humans are plentiful inside and outside of the Valley. I am tossing around the idea that humans from the Valley are slightly different from the PHB human, but I’m still working on that.

Tiefling – Out
Like the dragonborn, I also promised this race would be out when I ran a campaign. Granted I could probably allow someone to play one without as much of a story revision, I feel like the tiefling should be cut from the list.

Deva – Out
This just isn’t the campaign to allow this race.

Gnome – Out
This was a bare minimum cut. But given the gnome’s more nature-based origin moved it out of the approved list. Besides, I prefer more mechano-based gnomes (not tinker gnomes though).

Goliath – Out
Really WotC? You felt like this race needed to come back? Removed from the list due to it origins and that the DM hates them.

Half-orc – Out
I wanted to add this race, but the storyline guarantees that all orcs and half-orcs are killed on sight. I wouldn’t make an exception for a drow, so I won’t make one for a half-orc.

Shifter – In
I hated having to allow this class (being an Eberron creation and all), but their origins and the history of the Valley almost scream that they’re needed. So occasionally when two humans from the Valley have a child that child has the right jumble of DNA to make it a shifter. They are rare, so they have rules like that of the halfling. They also appear as human when in their normal form, but then get all freaky looking when stressed out (like being in combat).

So there we have 7 races, with some subtle differences within each race.

Now I’ll go through the classes, using the PHB, PHB2, Martial Power, & Arcane Powe.

Cleric – In
Though there are plenty of deities in the campaign world, only three will have a presence in the Valley. Accordingly only those 3 deities will have feats for usage with Channel Divinity.

Fighter – In
Every society needs it soldiers so the PHB1 fighters are allowed, but the PHB2’s tempest fighter is out because it turns the fighter into more of a striker, and the PHB2’s battlerager is out because I like minions and minions are worthless against them (or we’ve read the rules wrong).

Paladin – In
They are in and they have better starting gear than anyone else. But only one paladin can be played in the campaign, period. If the paladin dies, or the player gets sick of the paladin, then no one can take a paladin until a year of game time has passed. The paladin must also be a lawful good worshipper of Brekaneth and show himself/herself to be the pinnacle of all that is good within that clergy. The role-playing responsibilities of this PC are not small.

Ranger – In
The elves have taught the other races well, so rangers are in. But, for many reasons role-playing and not, beast master rangers are not allowed.

Rogue – In
The thieves’ guild in the Valley is powerful and organized. For that reason and more all three aspects of the rogue are allowed. Though if a rogue were to work independently of the guild (or um…go rogue), he might become black pudding food. Any PC from the Valley who has rogue abilities was trained by someone from the guild, and is thus a member whether they like it or not.

Warlock – Out
I have not liked this class since its beginning in 3E, but I despise them less now than I did before. Had I not liked the sorcerer, the warlock would have been a substitute, albeit a poor one. They make excellent villains, but I don’t think they should be a player class outside an evil campaign. I almost allowed the Fey Pact Warlock, but chose to just say no to the whole class.

Warlord – Out
I picture a warlord as a general leading his troops into battle. With some exceptions, there are no giant battles in the Valley. I want to have 2 leader classes available, but I’m not a fan of this classes player-helping-player buffs. Ditto that for the bard. So for the moment I’m dropping the warlord, with a “subject to change” sticker pasted on the class.

Wizard – In
Like the cleric, this class was pretty much guaranteed a spot. For now illusion magic is allowed, and possibly summoning magic though I’m going to smack it pretty hard.

Avenger – Out
So far the avenger appears to be a paladin on steroids. We’re already full on paladins.

Barbarian – Out
The Valley is too civilized for this to be a PC race.

Bard – In
For the moment I’m allowing the bard because their flair and jack-of-all-trades setup more suits the story than warlord does, but I’m not solid on this. I don’t like any class that has a lot of interrupting abilities that slow combat and warlord and bard both do that. It is entirely feasible that I could dump both warlord and bard.

Druid – Out
Out for the same reasons as the barbarian.

Invoker – In
The clergy of Brekaneth needed an answer to the wizard problem, and the invoker is what they came up with. All invokers must worship Brekaneth and must be from the Valley.

Shaman – Out
As you probably expected, the shaman won’t fit for the same reasons as the barbarian, druid, gnome, etc.

Sorcerer – In
The sorcerer definitely is living up to what I was hoping it to be, strong and random. For story reasons the dragon magic version of the class is out, all wild magic sorcerer PC’s must be born and raised in the Valley, and non-wild magic sorcerers must be from outside the Valley.

Warden – Out
I don’t think I’ll need to explain why.

Now we have 9 classes to work with; 2 leaders, 2 defenders, 2 controllers, and 3 strikers.

The players will receive a bit more information than this for the next step, which will begin some time in July when Dale will have to go on hiatus again.

That’s all I have for now.

Next time will be what happened in the Valley after the last PC’s left.

Intro to the Valley Part 2 - PC involvement

Being a DM can be pretty rough. You can put so much work into a campaign or module, but if your players don’t like it, then you’ve wasted your time.

For that reason alone, there was no way I was going to create every little thing in the game world, even though I wanted to do just that. It was simply an impractical thing to attempt.

Having that much planned out can give you just as much headache as too little planning. If you change X, then Y and Z may be impacted making work you’ve already done a waste of your time because now you have to revise things.

So for the Valley, I chose to have the basic information covered and fill in the rest later as I needed it; kind of like how TV shows fill in a character’s background when the need arises.

Example: Flying creatures, especially intelligent ones, such as dragons, never found the Valley. Why? For now, they just didn’t. And until the players pursued those reasons, or I felt the story justified it, I was never compelled to develop a reason why. Why back your story into a corner when there’s no need? Just think of many possible reasons and then pick the best one when the time is right.

Overall those who have played in the Valley have enjoyed it, mainly because it’s open enough that it can be what I need it to be and has the potential to be as much role-playing the players want.

The first campaign in the Valley lasted less than a half-dozen weeks and was really an intro to third edition for the three of us playing in the group at the time. But those few weeks showed how the Valley could fit the role-playing needs of two players easily.

Unfortunately we found out how much deadlier 3E fights were from 2E fights; specifically 2E grimlocks are pansies when compared to the 3E version.

The second campaign was started at the last minute thanks to a DM dropping out of running without warning. So I started the campaign again, this time with 4 players to start with and more added over the next few weeks. We started right where the last campaign left off. We even had a story line to find the missing PC’s from the previous campaign.

With more players it was not as easy to go into each PC’s role-playing set up, but there was enough.

Well, since this campaign was more of a filler campaign, I soon got the bug to play the game rather than run it. So after a bad game night where I killed off most of the party, I decided to take a break from DM’ing.

Dale was itching to run the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, so it was an easy switch.

A couple of years later and I was ready to run the Valley again; this time from the perspective of the people of the outside world having found out about it. And this time I would start the campaign as a result of wanting to do it rather than needing to do it.

The following bit is a heavily condensed summary of what happened over several months of gameplay.

The party was gathered by King Mehrik of Endaria and he asked them a favor; escort the wizard Nafterran to the Valley.

Nafterran had found out about a couple of people that had shown up at a fishing village, claiming to be from an isolated valley that had been cut off from the rest of the world for centuries.

Unfortunately the two citizens of the Valley were just as afflicted with lycanthropy as their ancestors were. In mid-story, both men were exposed to the full moon.

Many people lost their lives that night.

If not for a few elves that had been carrying silvered arrows the rampage would have continued for some time.

Using his extensive library, his great intellect, and various bits of evidence, Nafterran pieced together the origins of what happened and formed a plan to fix the Valley.

So the King gathered the party of specific people Nafterran asked for, all of whom accepted their new task.

Then the aged wizard teleported everyone as close to the Valley as he was able and then polymorphed himself into a necklace. The party had to walk the rest of the way to the Valley.

Among other things not worth mentioning here, the party came across the ruins of Silverhome, and found the Hammer of Silverhome – an intelligent and talking hammer that was bound to Silverhome. The hammer had some strong magic, but it didn’t accept any of the PC’s as there were no dwarves among them.

After clearing out the strange beasts living in the ruins (modeled after the Basic D&D module, Thunderdelve Mountain), they had to fight their way through a small horde of strange, slime-covered clan of goblins known as the Dead Dwarf Clan.

As luck would have it a dwarf, Rushgar Hammersmith, found the party as they were leaving the goblins’ caves and wouldn’t you know it, he was the rightful heir to Silverhome.

The party gave him the Hammer of Silverhome, giving them a lifelong ally.

Rushgar escorted the party to the Valley’s city council where Nafterran resumed his normal shape and convinced the city council to accept his plans.

So over the next three days, at high noon, Nafterran cast three separate spells at the spot he believed the original spell was cast that created the Valley.

The first day was a simple spell that prepared the Valley for the next two spells. Many people attended this, if only just to see outlanders. The populace saw the PC’s as richly dressed. The PC’s saw people who were dressed barely better than beggars.

The second day Nafterran appears a bit weaker and needs assistance in walking to the place where he needs to cast the second part of the spell.

Halfway through the minute-long spellcasting nearly every human, elf, dwarf, and half-elf born and raised in the Valley goes through a 10 second long series of muscle spasms as the spell destroys the lycanthropic beast laying dormant inside of them.

Though quite scared, everyone affected by the spell feels as if some dark spirit had been excised from them.

Later that evening the city has a celebration the likes they’ve not had in centuries. Nafterran and the PC’s are treated as heroes. That is until Gangrel, an evil dwarf with disgusting tastes, shows up with a message.

Two centuries prior, a trio of wizards was losing a political power struggle against the clergy of Brekaneth. They assassinated the top members of the clergy and then fled the city, never to be seen again.

They found a way out of the Valley, but chose to stay to further study the special magicks of the land. Their magic also led them to the unlife of lichdom.

They were content to leave the “sheep” of the city to rot in their prison indefinitely, but Nafterran’s magic was an unknown variable that could ruin their studies, so they sent their undead-loving freak of a dwarf to deliver a message – “Do not cast the final spell or the Dark Tribunal will sentence you all to death.” (Don’t make fun of the name; I couldn’t come up with anything better at the time.)

For reasons I’m not going list here, the city council almost asked Nafterran to not cast the final spell, but timely intervention on behalf of the revered Lord Velserrad switched a 3-4 vote to a 5-2 vote in favor of continuing.

The next morning most of the city’s defenders were assigned as protection for Nafterran.

As promised, when Nafterran began casting his spell a horde of undead appeared. The living defenders of the city were outnumbered seven to one, with over 2000 undead in all involved.

The standard undead were nothing to the liches, just fodder to keep the defenders busy while they dealt with their main target, Nafterran.

After one minute Nafterran caused time to stop and explained to the PC’s that he has done this because he has seen the future and it is dark and horrible. A long dead creature of great evil will be found and resurrected, but with the actions he took on that day he set in motion events that may give the world a chance of survival.

He then refreshed the PC’s (full hp, restored spells, etc.) and asked that they keep the Dark Tribunal at bay for another minute while he finishes the spell and the Silver Veil is lifted forever.

The PC’s barely succeeded in their task. Nafterran finished the last of the spell and his body exploded in a flash of searing light.

The liches, having failed, casually left the battlefield while their hordes continued to wreak havoc while the Silver Veil disappeared from the land.

Then Polaris arrived. His mind and body rapidly recovered and he took out most of the horde on his own.

Thus began the rise of the Valley.

The PC’s had a few more adventures in the Valley itself, but soon they left the Valley for adventure elsewhere.

(Then the WLD came out and I “paused” the campaign. That point of history can be read from my first blog entries almost 5 years ago.)

Intro to the Valley

Well since I haven’t played in a couple of weeks and this coming session will be a one-shot by me that probably won’t be anything more than a few simple fights, I’ve decided it’s finally time to give a little bit of information about my personal campaign “world” of The Valley.

There is no one place that it exactly originated. It came to me in bits and pieces while at a job over a decade ago, and eventually congealed into a usable campaign world.

That job was pretty much a mindless morass of work where I spent 8 hours a day, usually alone, working at an ancient machine. The job was neither fun nor interesting, but it allowed me several hours a day to think about whatever my mind decided was worth focusing on.

The timeline starts around the late era of AD&D 2E, when the Skills and Powers options books were being used by the group.

I was relatively new to the group then and we were running a three week rotation of two campaigns. One was Dale’s game using the S&P options. I had noticed that he was losing a little bit of interest in running as the campaign progressed in to the higher levels and less and less he was throwing at us was hurting us.

So I asked Dale if he would mind me taking over the campaign, and he had no problem with it. And in no time I was running a campaign with a lot of potential directions and PC’s with ever-increasing power…to the point where keeping things to the story was getting harder each week.

Although it was quite a fun campaign the group had lost 2/3 of its members in the span of 2 weeks. The three of us left decided to reduce our game to a single campaign, and I volunteered to stop mine because PC power had gotten out of control (100+ damage per round from a PC in 2E is disgusting).

For my next campaign I decided I wanted to keep the campaign limited in location while not trying to overtly prevent the PC’s from doing what they wanted.

At that time I had also been playing Might and Magic VI. There were a lot of quests and places and NPC’s in that game and they had the whole world set up for exploration.

So what if I could set up a lot of the game way ahead of the time, including monsters and maps and so on? This would give the players free reign to travel anywhere at any time and I’d have everything I needed ready.

In the end there was no way I could have done that without limiting the available campaign area to a small area while that area had plenty of opportunity to be interesting.

Mix those two aspects and I came up with the beginning of the Valley. For a reason that I had yet to come up with there was an area of plains land that had become totally surrounded by treacherous mountains preventing easy travel away from the place.

Next, how do I stop people from entering or leaving this place, or even knowing this valley even existed? Once the PC’s made it to a certain level they’re going to get Teleport; it’s a no-brainer.

The solution was easy, but kind of a “dick move” unless you give a good reason and make sure you have no loose ends.

My solution was something I called The Silver Veil. The same thing that caused the sudden creation of the Valley also ripped every bit of silver from the area so that it now permeated the air.

The back-story for this – This area was overrun by lycanthropes and they were at war with the uninfected people of the area. The lycanthropes were winning and hope was dwindling had a young and powerful mage not developed a spell that filled the air with silver and would destroy those with lycanthropy. But that mage did something wrong. The spell worked, but not as expected. Rock sprang forth from the ground for hundreds of miles around. The only unscathed area was within a few miles from the spell’s casting.

The lycanthropy had been suppressed, but the Veil also prevented summoning (but not conjuration of simple things, like food), teleporting, and so on. Even non-corporeal undead could not exist in this place.

And voila, no leaving the Valley by magic.

Yes, people did try to leave the Valley by foot, but they were never heard from again; the first fool moon after they left the area of the Silver Veil and they’d go on a rampage.

Now we have to fill in some blanks left by all that has happened to those poor people who survived such a nightmare.

Dwarves, elves, humans, and half-elves needed to exist so they could be PCs, so they had to be written in. There were no halflings, but that could have been ret-conned if it had to be.

The dwarves were originally part of a small clan that had made a home in some nearby hills that were rich in silver. Enough dwarves survived and found their way to the Valley.

The humans were, obviously, the survivors of the war against the lycanthropes who were lucky enough to be in the area that did not get raised hundreds of feet above where it used to be.

The elves were fighting alongside the humans, and joined with them when they set about rebuilding society, though they still remained separate from the humans on many levels and much smaller in number.

Half-elves were to come in time.

Then there were the goblins. That race survives like rats in a city, and they found their own way in this new place. They remained well hidden for years until they had enough numbers to burst out into the open, raiding for food and places to spread, eventually displacing the dwarves and forcing them to join with the elves and humans.

After much time, this new society settled into something stable, but with very few of the amenities or even resources they had before.

There was not much in the way of wildlife, and livestock was quite limited as well. After 300 years the only sheep and cattle around were weak from generations of inbreeding, but well taken care of, assuming no raiding goblins found them.

To assist in feeding the populace, each cleric was expected to conjure some food each day.

Water was plentiful as the seasons brought a nice cycle of snow then cool and clean river water from the high rocks above, which eventually drained into a rapid and treacherous underground river. Suitable lands near the rivulets became farmland.

In spite of the chili area above, the ground floor of the Valley remained quite warm, most likely due to volcanic activity.

Money changed slightly. There was no longer any silver currency, but since most of the populace was not exactly rich, copper was plentiful still. Platinum was quite rare, becoming more valuable in time. To fill the monetary gap, the city council established small, coin-sized discs of obsidian wrapped in iron as worth 10 gold.

Magic, like livestock, became limited and rare as there were few people left with the gift of magic. This was to change in time as some spells were found again or reinvented, but was quite harsh to begin with. Eventually the School of Wizardry was created to prevent any further loss of magical knowledge.

There’s a reason Dale has named the Valley “harsh world”.

Next I filled in a few things that I thought were interesting or needed to be done.

First, I hated that wizards had a limited number of spells per day and then they were done. I wanted to give them an option to cast more, but at a cost (because nothing special happened in early D&D without some kind of cost).

Thus I came up with the “innates”. People who had magic inside of them, barely controlled. They were like wizards but had no limit to the number of spells they could cast, though each casting ate away at them. For each level of the spell they cast, they’d take 1d4 damage, and for every 100 damage they had taken, they’d randomly lose an ability score point. Most innates eventually began to look like old men with scars from burns, something like Trashcan Man from The Stand.

Does the concept sound just slightly familiar? Well since I did not run this campaign until 3E came out, when they released the sorcerer class, I decided I liked the way WotC did it, and used that instead while still giving sorcerers the option to go above beyond their spell slots at a cost.

Since the general populace could not have people around that could lose control and burn houses down (some quite old and fragile), they were eventually put under the care of the School of Wizardry and taught to use their abilities. Eventually the first sorcerers came to teach the next generation of sorcerers, and so on. Eventually the School of Innates was created as a subordinate school to the wizards’ school.

Second, I felt that paladins should be rarer but more powerful. In a bit I’m not so happy with now, I decided there should be only 2 paladins in the Valley at any point in time – one an older veteran and the other a young one that is taught by the veteran. Looking back on it, I feel it’s too close to the Jedi/Sith set-up, but I’m not going to change that now.

As a result, only one PC can have a paladin, and for reasons covered below, he must be human and be a follower of the human god Brekaneth.

The plus side is that he starts with a magic longsword and plate armor. (No the sword is not made out of light.)

Third, if silver was part of the air, what if others could determine a way around the problem? What if they were vulnerable to silver? What if they were part silver?

Enter Lord Velserrad; hero and savior to the people of the Valley. His aid destroyed hordes of goblins saving the city time and time again. He was an ancient man who could die at any moment due to extreme age and had used magic to stretch his life far beyond its limit. He was also wholly evil and a vampire bent on world domination. If not for using powerful magic he would have been consumed and destroyed by the Silver Veil. The magic did not make him immune to the effects of silver on his vampiric body; it just delayed the effects long enough for him to invent a spell that would push away the veil for a week or so, all depending on how powerful of a magic item he sacrificed to the spell. Effectively any place inside his tower had no silver in the air, but he could never leave it. He created the façade of the feeble old man as a cover, and subtly manipulated the city’s powerful, gathering all the influence he needed to plan his escape from the Valley.

And yes, many people of the Valley would turn into werewolves if they stayed at his place during a full moon. He never let that happen if he could avoid it.

Now we have poor Polaris, a silver dragon at the time the Silver Veil dropped on him. His draconic magic protected for a short period of time, but unlike Lord Velserrad he was not in the midst of people who were desperate for help and some magic items to sacrifice or make for him.

Eventually every atom of silver was ripped from his body, though it did not kill him. The little time he had before his spell wore off allowed him to control how the Silver Veil attacked him.

Rather than killing him or possibly turn him into a rampaging freak of dragonkind, he became a shell of what he once was. He was plagued by constant pain, and his brain was little more than that of an animal but something of Polaris was still inside of him guiding him to make the right decisions.

He came to live in the lake now called Silver Lake, and he became the monster of the lake. Like the Lochness monster, people would occasionally catch a glimpse of something large in the water or things would disappear, large things, when people had their backs turned.

Polaris never hurt anyone that didn’t deserve it. His diet consisted mostly of goblins that did not heed the warnings and stories of the horrible beast in the lake.

Fourth, the citizens of the Valley had to live in something of an organized society.

The dwarves had been stubborn to begin with and did not join the humans and elves in the beginning. But within a few decades they had to flee from the goblins overrunning their new home.

Many heroic and good dwarves stayed and defended their home, giving their life for their brethrens’ escape. Most of the dwarves that joined the humans seemed to have something missing from them. (In game terms; the standard dwarven alignment had become lawful-neutral as the “selfless” gene was removed from the gene pool.)

These dwarves were the only ones left with the knowledge to mine from the new rock surrounding them, so they were able to still remain a bit separate from the city while still being part of it and receiving its protection.

Whenever the dwarves felt they were being taken for granted, they stopped production of iron and steel. This would usually cause the city to cave in to demands, and that was usually more money.

The elves were quite limited in numbers, but had much knowledge to teach. Teaching the humans how to take no more from the land than it can give was their first priority, and the humans were very reluctant students but they had no better options.

The elves needed the humans too, mostly for protection from ever reproducing goblins and also the humans were quite good at adapting to new situations.

Eventually the three races created a form of elected government as a forum to address all of their needs.

Fifth, and finally (for now), the religions of the Valley are not as diverse as other campaign worlds.

The small number of elves only had one religion, Corellon. They may have had more, but now only Corellon remains.

The dwarves, also limited in number, had Moradin. Like the elves, there may have been more, but now only Moradin remains.

The humans had several gods to worship, in the beginning.

For the human religion I took the best and worst of modern religions as I saw it back then and you have a god of protection, destruction, healing, and war.

Brekaneth, the god of the humans, has some very zealous followers. In a very few years after the establishment of the government of the Valley, only one human religion remained.

The exact details of how have disappeared from history, but we can assume some were integrated with loving arms and some were destroyed.

The Church of Brekaneth became a central part of the city’s survival. It trained soldiers and helped defend the city from countless goblin raids and attacks. Its clergy did much to feed the majority of the populace, especially during the first few critical years. It also pushed for more power at every opportunity.

Through the years the power of the church waxed and waned, sometimes having its own internal wars for which faction of the church would be dominant.

And there you have it, a minor tour of the beginning of the Valley.